Gift With a Pink Ribbon

After an extremely stressful year in my career, I am very happy to say that I have moved on to a new opportunity that has already begun to teach me new things, all while being surrounded by an energetically wonderful group of people. I’ll certainly miss some of the relationships I made in the past year, but knowing they are only a phone call away brings great comfort. It became increasingly difficult to raise money for the cause and unfortunately, many individuals also tried taking advantage of the program/cause sending in a slew of requests to get “free” blankets, forcing us to change the way we filtered requests and distributed the blankets we made. So I leave you with these words this beautiful Saturday morning… Live your truth and live this moment, for you never know what tomorrow will bring and tomorrow is already a thing of the past.

The start of our relationship five a half years ago was all exciting and filled with never ending rainbows and everything in between, but after only eight months into our relationship came the fateful news of my first breast cancer diagnose in 2013. And while we knew it was certainly going to be a journey full of ups and down, we ultimately just wanted to live our lives not always having to think about what was happening, seeing as it had already begun to consume much of our time and energy. Luckily, we were blessed with an incredible support system, since both our families and friends swooped in and filled us with so much light and love. The silver lining to this experience is that I know without a doubt I have found my soul mate, and with that I’m excited to announce that we’re engaged!

But that’s not all, which brings me to the rebranding of Gift With A Pink Ribbon, Inc. What started as my personal blog, morphed into a non-profit organization focused on bringing comfort to patients undergoing chemotherapy treatments. This part of my journey has been great, but as the years have gone by, it became clear to me that Gift With A Pink Ribbon, Inc., the non-profit organization, needed a new name so that I could continue to share my personal journey under my original name of “Gift With a Pink Ribbon Yes, our name has changed but our mission remains the same, “to help cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy find comfort and warmth during their treatments”, and I know that with your continued support, we will be able to raise enough money this year to resume the production of our blankets.

I went back to school to begin my studies in Communications with an emphasis on Public Relations, have stumbled across some interesting challenges (aka opportunities) in my career, adapted to several changes in my family dynamics, began working on rebranding my nonprofit, developed major back pain issues and learned that I shouldn’t have waited so long to seek medical attention because it could be cancer related, and well, as is the case for many, the list goes on. A little recommendation to those of you that have had breast cancer, please don’t ignore back pain symptoms or write them off as “something I can get through” like I did. With the end of the year quickly approaching, and after starting a new read called The Diamond in Your Pocket: Discovering Your True Radiance (by Gangaji, Forward by Eckhart Tolle), my new focus for 2018 is to live more in the moment by truly acknowledging my state of being and health in every experience I have and/or create. Whatever your goals are for the new year, make 2018 the year in which you create the space for you to be and energetically feel greater than you could have ever imagined!